American Folklore
by 332249
Summary: Hunters and Monsters all know the name Winchester, love 'em or hate 'em they've all heard the name. But what about the rest of the world? Follow a professor of mythology's research into the "Winchester Myth."
1. WinchesterJust a Rifle, Right?

_A/N: I referenced this "publication" in my fic "Find your way to it every time" when a werewolf thought that the Winchesters were the tall-tale. The idea amused me. You don't need to read anything first, this was written to completely stand alone. It was also written to mimic a "serious" research paper that a published, respected professional might create._

Modern American Folklore by Professor Delmonico

Chapter 3: Winchester; Just a Rifle...Right?

 **Intro**

A great many urban legends surround the name of "Winchester;" most notably, around the superstitious nature of the 1800's gun manufacturer, William, and the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. According to historical fact, the late magnate's widow continued to add rooms and extensions to her home for nearly forty years. When asked why, she would say it was to confuse and disorient any spirits looking for revenge for having been killed by a Winchester rifle. The structure still stands today as a tourist attraction.

More recently, and much more elusively, another Winchester Family has begun to create their own urban legend.

 **Section 1: Something New**

During hiatus from the university, I travel the United States and collect ghost stories and urban legends for research purposes. Though out my tenure as a professor, I have heard a cluster of urban legends that vary according to the location it is told in while retaining the same core details that classify them as the same legend. (see black dogs, women in white, Bloody Mary, and Hook Man in previous works.) I spend a great deal of time in small town libraries and truck stops, collecting and tracking the evolution of these legends. It is rare in Folklore to hear something newly created out of whole cloth.

Then, in the 1990's, rumors and whispers began to spread about a man named Winchester who, if you had a supernatural problem, could help put it to rest. At first, I didn't think much of it. Then over the next few years and decades, the rumor have spread like wildfire and the volume of the whispers grew into fully voiced speech. I became excited. Here I was, watching the birth of a new urban legend. Now, nearly 30 years later, the Winchester Family is so completely accepted as fact that believers of the supernatural have begun to threaten the monsters in the closet with the very name.

Case and Point:

During one of my research furloughs, I became caught in an intense storm. For safety, I and many other drivers pulled into a lonely truck stop to wait it out. It was one of those off the beaten path roadhouses, a favorite watering hole for those who live on the road and dislike "normal" people. At the apex of the storm, the wind blew hard enough to cause the building's lights to flicker. The motorcycle club and the semi drivers all looked at each other in concern. Then the biggest, burliest specimen among them hauled to his feet and threw open the front door. At his highest volume he bellowed into the storm: "Alright, you demonic ba****ds! Keep that up and I will call the Winchesters here to gank every single one of your sorry a***s!"

Every man there agreed, that the threat shouted into the night is what caused the storm to let up.

I was floored. The monster under the bed suddenly had a counter balance: The Winchesters. Intrigued, I asked for more. Why, I asked, does the name "Winchester" demand so much respect? Who are the Winchesters? As popular culture swells with vampire TV shows and zombie movies, I wondered if the Winchesters were the push back for the men who were most often away from safe environs; the men who occasionally actually worried over such things as the specter canine laying in wait for the unwary traveler while on an nearly empty back road in a bad storm.

When I asked out loud, I was rewarded with a wealth of stories and anecdotes: John rescued a trucker's town in New Mexico from the clutches of evil succubi back in '91. John and Dean laid to rest the chain-gang prisoners' ghosts that were moving roads to dump drivers off the cliffs in the mountains in '02. Dean shot the Black Dog scarring over-night drivers into wrecking in '03. Sam and Dean freed men and women from becoming some cannibals' main course when a storm had forced everybody into a forgotten hotel in 2010. (Lightening flashed ominously to punctuate this story.)

Not every one had a Winchester story. Most of them heard what they knew from a friend of a friend over a cold beer or a double shot. Interestingly, two, only two, claimed to have met the men personally. When asked to describe these "living legends," they both answered the same. John, the patriarch of the clan, was dark-haired and thickly built with a serious demeanor. Dean, the eldest son, was likewise thickly-built but lighter than his father, with a zest for life. Sam, the younger son, was tall and wiry with a quiet, competent demeanor.

Amazingly, as I asked about the family at other roadhouses and truck stops, I continuously received the same names and descriptions. Modern police will tell you how rare it is that witnesses all completely agree on descriptions; it is no different for folklore researchers. The bones of the narrative are the same, but the small details change. Except this one didn't.

Out of more curiosity than scientific approach, I began to ask for Winchester stories at locales other than the backroad rest stops. In every town, I asked the local historians, librarians, and the diner waitresses for their best known local legends like I always do. This is how I get much of the material for my previous works and later chapters in this one. Then I asked the same if they had ever heard of these Winchesters, or anyone who rode into town and vanquished the local legend.

Yes, indeed, they had.

There was a diner waitress in Jericho, CA who insisted that two brothers interviewed her a decade ago about her missing friend. After she told them about the local woman in white, no one ever went missing down that road again. In Toledo, OH a woman overheard me asking the librarian and told me of her encounter with Bloody Mary (also nearly a decade ago) and the brothers who showed up at her father's wake. They saved her life, the woman insisted, by shattering the original mirror this Mary died in front of. In Ankeny, IA the local pastor (who had the best kept town historical records in his parish) admitted to being attacked by a man with a large silver hook who seemed to vanish and appear out of thin air. He and his daughter were saved from this apparent apparition by the self-proclaimed brothers Winchester.

And the list went on. Since I started asking, a research trip has not gone by that I didn't encounter a Winchester story.


	2. Myth vs Man

I am a tenured professor of Mythology and American Folklore. My interests do not include whether or not a myth or folktale is true; my interest lies in the society that creates the story and the effect that same story has on how the society develops. However, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. This was a folktale in the making; not since the early 1900's has _that_ happened. I had the chance to see if myth could have a basis if fact before it exploded into the collective imagination.

Did I have a Paul Bunyan, a caricature of all the best pieces and parts of lumberjacks who somehow managed to acquire a blue ox? Or did I have a Johnny Appleseed, a figure many students forget was based on a real man named John Chapman?

John, Dean, Sam; the Winchesters. All three of them were six-foot-plus men, heavily muscled, and reportedly rather handsome; exactly the descriptions one would expect for heroes out of legend. But thankfully, well-built handsome men really do exist (sadly, not as many as I would like; but I digress.) I was interested to note that none of these men have a similar body type: the father is reportedly rather swarthy and stocky, the eldest light-haired, the youngest lean. If this was a real family, I would expect more physical similarities. Admittedly the United States, with its history of a racial melting pot, such diverse characteristics could occur inside a single nuclear family. Though I still put this trait range as a point in the "against" column.

Really, its almost like the storytellers picked actors at random to play a family.

Well, if these men had some base in reality, then the family would have left some trace of themselves in public record. As a teacher, I have told my students that wikipedia is not a credible source and that google is not a scholastically approved filter for information. For this project, I found myself reconsidering my words. I will still not accept references to wikipedia from my students. But I will admit that google is a valid stepping stone when faced with a nation-wide search for information. If any of my students read this, for the record: Anything you find by using google must be vetted carefully and double-checked using a second source.

Alright, fine. I googled the name Winchester. And sure enough, I found exactly _one_ family with a John and his two sons Sam and Dean online. All of them physically fit the descriptions I had been given, including probable ages from my few eyewitnesses.

I drove to Lawrence, KS and pulled county records for verification of birth records (Students, I mean it: use primary source documentation). Then, I drove to Little Rock, AR to pull Green River County arrest records. Next, I contacted my local FBI field office to see if they still had the Top Ten Most Wanted photos from 2012. (The mug shots I found have been included in the appendices.) And finally, back to Ankeny, IA to request copies of two death certificates.

John, Sam and Dean all had quite the rap sheets: fraud, breaking and entering, kidnapping, robbery, and murder. I was about to discount the whole project when I remembered. In the decade that I have been asking, most stories portray the Winchesters as the protagonists. Most, not all. Two men, on two occasions both told me another version.

The first was a drunken rant along the lines of "Those d**n Winchesters, deserve to die! Started the d**n apocalypse!"

The second was a much more lucid accounting:

"You want to know about the freakin' Winchesters, lady? I'll tell you. Killers, both of 'em. Oh, sure, they'll gank any monster you could name and dozens more you couldn't imagine. But..." The man shook his head and sipped at his whiskey. "But ol' John was a menace, didn't care about collateral damage as long as he got his vengeance. Then little Sammy lost his girl and was ten times as bad as his old man, damn near took the world down with him. And through it all, Dean was right behind them both, whatever they needed _he_ took care of it. I ask you, doc, who's hands are dirtier? The addicts or the enabler?"

I think I'll leave that last question to the philosophy department.

Not exactly the background one expected for heroes. But then... Hercules was tricked into the murder of his own family and undertook the Trials at his friend's suggestion to clear his conscience. If a researcher had run into Hercules and the wrong point in time, could he have been mistaken for a drunken murderer? One Winchester story included holding a bank hostage to contain a shape-shifting monster before it could escape. Another included robbing a museum to save the archaeologists from a curse. With no belief in the supernatural as context, these actions could easily be misunderstood.

Without access to FBI files, I will never know the facts behind the charges against the Winchesters of record. But even the most vocal detractors against the Winchesters of legend agreed they stop monsters. If these Winchesters were the base for the growing legend, then they are proving themselves to be quite human, complete with fatal flaws.

New ghost vanquishing stories have been told since the date of their death. Other new stories are told even now. If these men are the basis of the new legend, then a pair of death certificates have done nothing to stall its growth or prevent people from belief. I asked at a truck stop: If the Winchesters were dead, how are they still saving people and hunting monsters? One suggested that they had become ghosts themselves and will continue the family business for eternity; that they can appear wherever evil lurks.

Or as he said, "Hell's scared of 'em, Heaven don't want 'em, and Purgatory couldn't hold 'em. Even when they die, they got no where to go but to stay here and do what they've always done."


	3. Filtered to Popular Culture

Many have heard the quote, "Art imitates life, which imitates art in turn." Something similar could be said for mythologies and folktales. Humanity creates heroes and stories of their exploits in part for entertainment and in part to teach morality. Then, when humans are inevitably faced with crisis points and hard decisions, they ask themselves what is the right thing to do? What would the hero of the story do? They make their choices based on lessons internalized from stories; some don't even realize they are doing so.

Assuming that the preceding concept is true, how have the Winchesters affected society? How does their story spread and with it those effects? How widespread does the story go?

I can easily say that I have heard at least one Winchester anecdote in each of the lower 48 states in this country. But remember that I go out looking for them and asking for them. How does the average person hear the name? So in the last few years, I have begun to ask the question: Where did you hear that? The answers have been surprising.

Among the travelers (the truckers and bikers) stories are swapped around in bars and restaurants over cold drinks and warm food. Outside motel rooms and in the line for the shower house at the hitch site. Or in an old roadhouse while a storm blows over. Tall-tales are traded around as entertainment and one-ups in bragging rights for having survived the scariest stories. My favorite of those conversations went like this:

"Dean pulled a vetala off of me, pulled those fangs right out of my neck!"

"Yeah, well, that's nothing! I was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, butt-naked on a f******g sacrificial alter with a f******g witch standing over me with a mother-f******g knife! If John had been two seconds slower, I'd have been f*****d!"

"I was demon-possessed for, like, months. The d**n thing took one look at those Winchesters and smoked right outta me. Didn't say one word of the exorcism, either of 'em, just glared."

"Ha! Freakin' Winchesters! Y'know, they're why I saved your a** from that crazy tweaker with the knife?"

"Yeah? How's that?"

"I figured if Sam and Dean can clear out an entire vamp's nest, the least I could do was get the drop on one druggie."

After which all of the men present raised their beer in a toast to the Winchesters.

The rough necks travel, trading tall tales. The waitresses dutifully laugh at the men, and then go home to tell their children a watered-down version of events minus the swearing. The kids go to sleep-overs or camping trips and tell scary stories with a flashlight under their chin. Camp counselors and other parents swap 'kids say the darndest thing' stories around the water cooler. And so, a legend grows; fed by the rumor mill and spilling into the next generation. Few people know where it got started, except for 'a friend of a friend' was there and that makes it100% true.

Interestingly, there was another avenue I hadn't considered. Although mine may be the first academic publication, its not the first book to feature the Winchesters. This particular folktale inspired a book series called Supernatural, written by Carver Edlund. I was introduced to the books by a librarian who, when I said the name "Winchester," groaned and pointed to the display her high school part-timer had put together in the teen room. Mr. Edlund must have heard the several of the same legends I had and then fleshed them out into full novels. The librarian's assistant tells me there are even conventions for the books, complete with a Live Action Role Play ghost hunt. The last convention she went to had over a hundred in attendance.

She also tells me that her parents have "revoked salt privileges" after she poured salt over every door and window in her house during a sudden black out. After laying the salt lines, she spray painted a "devil's trap, y'know, from the book cover" on the living room carpet. Apparently, all the monies earned from her library job are being garnished by her parents to cover the cost of replacing the carpet. For the record, the black out was caused by a late night single car accident hitting a utility pole. The teen insists she'd do it all again because its better safe than sorry and she will always assume horror movie rules apply.

Her parents have since banned the books from the house.

The girl didn't seem to mind her punishment. She had been baby-sitting her sleeping ten-year-old brother at the time. When asked if she honestly thought ghosts and demons were real, she answered, "Dunno. But they _could_ be. And if they are, they weren't gonna get MY kid brother. Not if I have something to say about it. What kind of big sister do you take me for? If I didn't at least try to protect him, I'd have to throw myself out of the Dean-Girl fan club."

What effect have the Winchesters had upon the world? At the very least, their mythos has caused one long distance truck driver to make it home to his wife and kids instead of being stabbed and robbed in a dark alley. One little boy knows that his sister isn't scared of the bogeyman and will always be there for him. Men or Myth, the Winchester have already inspired some to hold themselves to a higher standard. Isn't that what heroes are for?


	4. Author's Note

Author's Note

Professor Delmonico's chapter is finished.

If you want to follow her story, please look for my next posting called "Professor of American Folklore."

It'll be a different format, so I didn't want to continue it here.

Thanks everybody for all the lovely reviews!


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